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Weekly Writing Prompt 1

Red lipstick stains on soda cans, mouth pressed tightly so
they could never see that you weren’t swallowing.

After dinner bathroom breaks that were always spent with the
tap conveniently on full blast.

Offers of popcorn and Pringles and muffins routinely declined
because you had always “unfortunately” just eaten.

This was all done again and again, measured against a scale
and if the results weren’t adequate you just tightened the schedule, increased
the dosage.

Subconsciously you had always blamed your mother. She was
both the cause and the symptom of a generation of women who were taught the
best they had to offer could be seen in the white of their smile, the length of
their long skinny hairless legs. Consciously, you always blamed yourself; for
being unable to put down the fork after the fifth time it had entered your
mouth, for thinking that your fries needed ketchup – for thinking that you
needed fries at all.

You may be smart and you may be brilliant. But the world
didn’t want or need you to be any of those things, it wanted you to be pretty.
And what was prettier than a stomach gradually caving in and thighs that didn’t
even brush against each other when you walked?

What was prettier than each calorie obsessively measured by an app before you even risked buying it? What was prettier than purging your stomach of all of its contents if you thought that you had indulged more than absolutely necessary? What was prettier than no carbs, no sugar, no meat, no fat and no dairy? What was prettier than restraint?